D—No. 10,

his favour only, but that he is the applicant. It is very necessary that there should be a check upon the party first applying. If he does not offer fair terms, is it right that he should have the sole right of pre-emption? I think not. The Crown's right of preemption has been waived in respect of a certain tract on the application of , who has not bought the whole of that tract. Any other person may buy the remainder; and by sending in copies of his deeds and surveys, and a reference to the letter to to show that the Crown's right had been waived in respect of that land, he will in due course obtain a Grant." (Fulton, No. 132, 14th February 1845). That was Governor Fitzßoy's interpretation of his own Penny-an-acre Proclamation; Sir George Grey's interpretation was very different: " The Governor for the time being, upon the application of one individual, waives the Crown's right of pre-emption over these islands, and he does not so waive this right in favour of all the Queen's subjects, but of one individual. (Polack, No. 178, 19th May 1849.)

Then again the terms of the proclamations themselves, and the regulations in the Gazette, were such as to make it in my opinion nearly impossible in most cases to comply with them. Governor Fitzßoy published a notice condemning those who had made purchases prior to obtaining the waiver, and threatened to reject all applications where this had been done; but granted the waiver notwithstanding, in numerous cases after purchase. He said that only " a few hundred acres " were meant, and then granted applications for 1000, 1500, 2000, and 3000 acres. One thing however seems clear; no Pre-emptive claimant could justly claim under any circumstances more land than his certificate entitled him to buy. If he had a certificate for 1000 acres and bought 5000 with it, he might have a just right to 1000 acres, but under no interpretation could he have a just right to the excess. In this respect the pre-emptive claimant differs from the claimant under purchases made prior to the Queen's sovereignty ; but if in the latter class the principle be admitted that they should have all they bought, in the Pre-emptive claims it should be admitted so far as that they should have all they bought up to the amount of their certificate; and I hope nothing will be done which shall give any more land to one class and refuse it to the other.

The difficulty is so insuperable of deciding what were the rights really conferred on the Pre-emptive claimants by the Penny-an-acre Proclamation and Regulations, and how far, a literal compliance with their terms being impossible, those terms could be deviated from in one case without doing great injustice in another, that I neither wonder at the resolution of Sir George Grey to close the claims by laying down a scheme of his own, nor at the determination of the Committee of 1856 to adhere to the leading features of that scheme in their own proposals. I need only add, that if the right of pre-emptive claimants be now admitted to a grant of the whole of the land they bought, the Province of Auckland would have to refund a large sum of money received from the sale of preemptive land, or to pay its equivalent in other land.

It will have been seen from the preceding observations on the subject of Old Land Claims, that I think no general measure with respect to the Surplus land in those claims should be passed without the simultaneous total abolition of the maximum originally fixed in 1840. In like manner, while I have admitted that in the pre-emption claims there were many cases of dutess by the imposition of a different kind of maximum, I think no general measure should be passed that did not also abolish that maximum, and of course re-open all the settled claims. It is for His Excellency's Government to decide whether that course should be proposed: I do not propose it, because if on the ground of redressing injustice the General Assembly is ready to repeal the principles of its own legislation as well as of legislation under previous forms of Government, it must not stop at the Land Claims; there are other things where equity would demand a more thorough reversal of past policy than any that could be claimed in the history of purchases ol land from the natives.

CONCLUSION.

In conclusion, it may be as well to recapitulate the preceding information :

1. The total number of Claims of all classes was 1376.

2. There were 1050 Old Land Claims.

3. There were 250 Pre-emptive Claims.

19

REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER.